From: "doobisary" <tjp314@pacbell.net>

Date: November 8, 2011 1:57:47 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Asteroid 2005 YU55 observations?

Hi all:

I wasn't sure we'd have clear skies tonight, since we had some really biblical thunderstorms As recently as Sunday night, but it looks like it will be clear.

Pegasus should be high enough to clear my house from the back yard by the time I get home and can get set up for imaging, so I plan to go out and do so.

Since the asteroid is fainter than 11th magnitude, I imagine setting the exposure time to a few seconds will be in order.  I'll use my Scorpion 1600x1200 mono camera for the video.  Probably without a filter, to pull in as many photons as possible.  

I'll look over Milton's descriptions of how he did his light curve work on other asteroids, but I imagine my best strategy will be to simply start recording "video" and manually track the asteroid as it screams across the sky for as long as I can (or until I collapse or fill up my hard drive).

I'll use my 10" f/6 Newtonian on the Tak EM-500 mount for this.  I need to tweak the collimation on the primary, but the asteroid is going to be near Altair in the sky so I'll use it to collimate on.

If anyone has any suggestions as to my strategy that I haven't thought of, please let me know.

-Tim.